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Powerful magic has powerful consequences. Magic can tear into where the souls of the dead reside and send souls hurtling back to the Material Plane and be given flesh. Magic can call to those whose time had come too soon, only to find that the spell was cast improperly and the wrong soul was retrieved. A powerful soul can travel to the Material Plane and bind matter to himself to form a body. A powerful mage may turn a stone statue to flesh and blood and bind a soul to it. All these are possible origins of candothists. Whatever the cause of their incarnation, they themselves are all the result of a soul returning to the world to live again.

A candothist only loses his memories from before he initially becomes a candothist. He retains most all his memories when he self-reincarnates.

Candothists are glad to be alive and relish every moment they get. They enjoy the pleasures and the pains of existence. They brim with quirks and often show signs of old fashioned conservatism. They love aged things, as if they trigger an innate sense of familiarity in a world that seems strange to them. However, all too often, seemingly innocuous circumstances causes them to freeze in a grip of lost thought. Because of their lost past, they endlessly search their world for answers about who they were, just as much as they would rather forget their past entirely and focus on who they are now.

Candothists are among the most physically varied of mortals, being difficult to identify from half-breed folk and unusual outlanders. They often share traits that are common to certain races, such as pointed ears or small horns. Among the great diversity, identifying an individual becomes a simpler task, as each candothist has one or more unique traits that allow him to be identified after a reincarnation.

Whatever the specifics of their appearances, all candothists appear oddly assembled, with slightly twisted anatomy or strange features. In addition, since candothists might have no gender, they can also appear generic or androgynous.

Candothists range in height from a bit below five feet on the short side to nearly seven feet tall at their tallest, with the shorter individuals weighing around 90 pounds and the taller ones weighing in at nearly 230 pounds. They almost always appear lanky, a trait accentuated by their typically disproportionate anatomy. As their gender varies from incarnation to incarnation, there is no distinction among height and weight among the sexes (or sexless).

Due to whatever trick of scrambled thoughts and memories from past lives, candothists generally have very poor fashion senses, mixing colors and styles or simply dressing awkwardly or in clothes not designed for their gender. They wear what they like.

Candothists have an unusually awkward gait. Many folk have likened this movement to that of shambling undead or those with severe physical afflictions.

Candothists do not have a society or shared culture of their own, as their numbers are far too small and widespread. Needing the companionship of other humanoids for their pursuit of self-realization, they integrate themselves as best they can wherever they find themselves living. Human lands offer the quickest and easiest opportunity for social acceptance as often in human lands, a candothists eccentricities are often overlooked. Frontier towns with mixed folk are also fair locations for candothists to live.

Candothists have no predisposed fixation on any moral or ethical compunction. They may not remember how or why they feel certain ways, due to their loss of memory and reincarnation, and take to their previous alignment readily unless they are not given to the same lifestyle and situation as before they returned to life.

Candothists don't typically prefer to lead sheltered lives and are often drawn into the lands of other peoples. Human lands often support the most variety and willingness to support other welcome races. Candothists don't congregate into communities of their own and have no lands they call their own.

Candothists often praise the Gods for giving them the power to return to the world of the living as often as they curse those same Gods by taking away their memories. They often find solace by praying to Gods of Magic and Travel as they search for arcane secrets and wander from town to town. Many candothists, lacking a childhood to impress upon them the importance of religion, as well as lacking the social structure for a need for religion, find themselves reflecting upon the world around them for spiritual guidance.

From the moment they are created, candothists know how to speak Celestial and Common. They can be quite talkative, readily telling stories in hopes of garnering enough trust to hear one in return. They tend to prefer speaking in specialized tongues, depending on the topic at hand. Gesticulating during conversation is also common, even if it is subtle.

Skill Memory: A candothist gains an additional +4 skill points at first level, as he retains some form of memory from a past life.

Bend Time (Su): Once a minute, as a swift action, he can alter the flow of time around himself, mimicking the effects of either haste or slow for 1 round. This supernatural ability does not counter the effects of those spells, but does supercede it for that one round. This ability also affects targets in his space of his size and smaller. The save DC to resist this ability is 10 + his Charisma-modifier + ½ his HD.

Existential Shield (Su): Once a minute, as a swift action, he can call upon the force of his very being, granting him his Charisma bonus as a bonus to his Armor Class for one round.

Strange Body Language (Ex): He moves differently than his form suggests, especially in combat. He is treated as nonhumanoid for the purposes of resolving Feint attempts (attackers suffer a −4 penalty to their attempt). Unfortunately, his odd movements cause him to suffer a −4 penalty on Balance skill checks.

Haunting Flashbacks (Ex): From time to time, he encounters something that perplexes his senses as if he were overwhelmed by déja vu. At the start of every encounter, before he takes an action, there is a 25% chance that he notices something that triggers a recollection to some vague and hazy lost or stolen memory. If this happens, he can take no action (other than to defend himself) for 1 round and thereafter takes a −1 morale penalty on all attacks, saves, ability checks and skill checks until he snaps out of it by concentrating as a full-round action.

Self-Reincarnate (Su): A candothist can return from death without outside magical aid. When a candothist dies and rests in the afterlife for 8 hours, he can choose to return to his flesh up to 1 day/level later at the cost of 500 EXP per HD. If he is unable or unwilling to part with 500 EXP per HD, he instead loses 2 Constitution. He may later restore this Constitution loss by paying 500 EXP per his current HD in a ritual that lasts 8 hours as he rests. Regardless of his "payment", he additionally takes 2 points of Constitutionburn which can only be healed naturally. This ability burn never reduces his Constitution below 1, nor does the Constitution loss lower his HP below 1 per HD. Upon using this ability, he returns to his body, which is restored to life and at 1 HP. If he chooses to use this ability, the player must roll on the Morphic Reincarnation chart below. If his body was destroyed (reduced to less than half its original weight), he cannot return to life with this ability. See additional restrictions and notes under The Reincarnation Process below.

There are several circumstances that prevent a candothist from returning to his body upon his death:

If his body is raised as an undead. However, making an unsuitable vessel, the process instead fails and his corpse melts into blood and ichor.

If his body is placed inside a magical container or surrounded by magical barriers or force.

If his body is cut in half (or otherwise reduced to less than half its original weight).

If his body is petrified. A candothist turned to stone is not dead. However, this situation grants him the option of allowing his soul to depart, which does kill him. This choice must be made at the moment of petrification. If his body is ever turned back to flesh, he may return to it as normal.

If his body rots.

If he cannot pay 500 EXP per HD or 2 Constitution, he cannot use Self-Reincarnate.

There are several circumstances that allow a candothist to return under special conditions:

If he has previous bodies that have been preserved (such as through gentle repose), his soul may return to a previously inhabited body, so long as it is available to be inhabited.

His soul may inhabit the bodies of other departed candothists, so long as the body has been prepared for him to return to it. To prepare a foreign body for him to inhabit, an 8 hour ritual must take place and the body is bathed in specially prepared magical fluids costing 1,200 gp.

A casting of reincarnate rebuilds the candothist’s body and can recall him. With the spell, a candothist rolls on the Morphic Reincarnation chart, not the reincarnate chart listed with the spell.

Upon using his Self-Reincarnate ability, a candothist will have no memory of just being dead, and will often come to the conclusion that he was left for dead, but somehow survived. Waking up in a coffin six feet underground has killed many candothists (again), but when they escape, it often acts as fuel for rumors of undead in the area.

Each time a candothist uses his Self-Reincarnate ability, he must roll on the Morphic Reincarnation chart below to determine what parts of his form change. Each Incarnation starts at the adult age and characters loose any age penalties or bonuses from their previous incarnation. Candothists do not have a maximum age from which they can be incarnated from, but they still die of old age. If Neutral is rolled, the character appears neither male nor female. His unique candothist traits (such as horns or pointed ears) do not change during reincarnation.

Each candothist is created with one or more unique traits that help him to be identified even when his body is altered during the reincarnation process. Listed below are some basic concepts and ideas to help players decide on a possible unique trait.

If you would prefer, you may roll a d12 to determine a unique trait category randomly.

Table: Candothist Unique Character Traits

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Unique Trait

Ideas and Options

1

Horn/Horns

Unicorn-like, Ram-like, Antlers, Short Nubs, Fiend-like, Dragon-like

2

Tail

Long, Short, Finned, Tufted, Thick, Thin

3

Eyes

Solidly Colored, Unusually Colored, Metallic, Animalistic, Extra Eyes

4

Teeth

Pointed, Small, Flat, Oddly Colored, Jagged, Toothless

5

Hands

Six Fingers, Four Fingers, Webbed, Thick Nails, Nail-less, Different Colored